In Continuum.

Angelic Angelica

Stitch in your knitted brow
And you don't know how
You're gonna get it out
Crushed under heavy chest
Trying to catch your breath
But it always beats you by a step, all right now

There is something calming about my room at night, something that I love. I remember a friend of mine asking me to describe my room in its current state, and I described to her that it looks like the inside of a human heart. With the lamp turned on at night, the room is dyed into a shade of orange and red, very much like the inside of a heart I would imagine, with all the blood flowing around the veins and everything. In many ways, this analogy does give a very good representation of what I hold dear, because this is where I keep my most beloved things in life. My music collection in the computer, my computer itself, my guitars, the books that I bought, the comfort of my bed, everything. It is my heart in some ways, and the lamp in the corner of the room would represent a glimmer of hope in the dark, the core of my heart I suppose. The life within, even when all other lights go out.

That is what my heart would look like I suppose, if you are small enough to enter the blood vessels and eventually flow into my organs. If you have the time, travel upwards and into my brain and look around for a sign of life there. After the horrendous grades that I have been receiving in the past few days, I don't suppose it'd be easy to find anything alive up there. I picture a war zone somehow, empty streets with vacant rows of houses on either side of the roads. Debris fallen everywhere, the grandeur of a city long gone, after the disaster that swept through the lands over the past few weeks. The people have either died of fled to distant lands, leaving behind a ghost town for the shadows to take over. That'd be the mental image of my brain, after toiling endlessly for the examination and the oil burned in the wee hours, all I asked for then was to have good grades, something to look forward to at the end of the road. But what returned from the distant lands were not the glory and beauty that used to possess the city, but rather the forgotten spirits and ghosts that stubbornly lingers.

Making the best of it
Playing the hand you get
You're not alone in this

My grades sucked. Not in the sense that it tanked, but because I failed to meet my own expectations, and perhaps the expectations others have set for me as well. In the context of an university, I don't suppose it is about how many people are scoring worse than you, or how many are scoring better than you. It is a constant battle with yourself, and how high you can achieve in terms of your results. That's what they always say anyway, to challenge yourself and never those around you, and I truly believe in that as a motto in school. I do not care if everybody scores an A, as long as I score the same then that would suffice. But the case right now is that everybody are not scoring as well as they hoped to, and I am falling short of my own expectations as well. So there, the soldiers in my brain fought a war in which they lost miserably. I'm sure every soldier in a war would like to see the flags of their own country flying in the air instead of their enemies. But there are no flags in this desolated town, no blaring horns to celebrate the victory or the sound of people cheering in the streets. Just the echoes, and the occasional sound of rocks falling from a certain high place. It was a flat out defeat, on my part.

You know how it is in horse racing, there is always that dark horse that everybody roots for every once in a while. Because the dark horse has the odds against him all the time, and you win big when you bet small, and you win bigger if you bet big. Every once in a while, a miracle would happen on the mud tracks, and you see the dark horse emerging through the ranks of other horses and pass the finish line first, causing the audience to erupt into an ocean of cheers. Those are the kind of stories people like to hear, because people like the idea of a miracle. Something unexpected happens, and everybody is going to draw their attention there. Nobody likes to hear about somebody winning a race ten times in a row, or even twenty times. Because we always need that dark horse every once in a while, that hero.

There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope

We got back our results today for UGC, and there I was sweating from my palms. I made impressions on the table with my palms, afraid to know what kind of grades I would receive, if the scene in the vacant city is going to continue for the rest of the semester. I really needed a boost, a sudden jet of energy from somewhere as a motivation of sorts. I guess I am the kind of person that works on motivation, rather than goals. A kind word or a warm hug works better than a promised prize at the end of the road, and I needed that warm hug desperately. I've never had high hopes for UGC, since history has never been my forte. I've never understood why the teachers are always telling us that learning history is a way of not repeat our past mistakes. The truth us, humans are always going to repeat past mistakes, whether or not they learn the history or not. A lot of our mistakes are in our blood, it is human nature. Like the mistakes that I have been making throughout this semester, it'd be hard to abstract that from my blood, no matter how hard I try. So there I was sitting still at the table, with a million thoughts rushing through my brain at the same time. On the surface, I was dead calm. But underneath that, petrification.

When the papers were laid on the table in front of the class, I hesitated as to whether or not I should go forward and get my paper. It was a stupid question on my part, because I couldn't prevent the inevitable in any way possible. I had to face the grades, no matter how bad they may be. I did have confidence for my essay questions, but the upset during Psychology was too much to bear. I accepted the fact that things have the tendency to make the wrongest turns and take the deepest plunge into the dark. They become suicidal at times and everything goes to hell afterwards, and there isn't anything that I can do to prevent that. There I was, amidst the crowd of eager student, figuratively wetting my pants.

Cold in a summer breeze
Yeah, you're shivering
On your bended knee
Still, when you're heart is sore
And the heavens pour
Like a willow bending with the storm, you'll make it

I made my way through the crowd and got closer to the table where the stack of paper was. My heart was beating so fast that it must have been caught somewhere in between my lungs and throat. I could feel the pulse in my eyelids for some reason, and it became hard to blink for a second or two. I was right behind Jonathan, hoping for him to fish out my paper from the mess that was on the table then. After a while, he turned back with my paper and mumbled something under his breath which I did not catch. He said something about finding only one paper and not the other, but I distinctively remember only submitting one extra stack of paper, because I wrote the other question on the back of the question paper itself. So there I was with Jonathan amidst the crowded of eager students, flipping through the pagers of our question papers eagerly to reveal our own fates. We didn't have high hopes, or at least I didn't have any for myself. I was ready to accept the worst, and at the same time hoping for the best.

Fifteen for the first question, and then fifteen for the next. I did a mental sum and added the marks, and they amounted to thirty points in total - upon thirty. I looked over at Jonathan, and his face lighted up in that trademark joy of his whenever he attains a satisfactory grade. He must have been thinking the same about the look on my face, because right after we exchanged that emotion in the split second, we exploded in joy and went crazy in the lecture theater. Like I said before, we needed a morale booster fast, and the grades for our essay were truly amazing to begin with. I jumped for joy - literally - and saw living souls coming back into the ghost town all over again. Life, life was coming back to me. There is hope even for the hopeless indeed!

Running against the wind
Playing the cards you get
Something is bound to give

I guess we still have to thank Angelica, our lecturer, to have marked the paper so kindly. Not to say that I didn't put in enough effort, but I still needed that stroke of luck on her part to make the magic work. I have her to thank in the creation of this miracle, and she is truly the angel in this semester alone. I saw UGC as this subject that I was ready to give up in, the subject with the least confidence. But here I stand, with a grade I am happy enough to boot, and a lot of motivation to drive me further down the road. I am happy with my grades, and that is all thanks to Angelica for her kindness - and more. This is a renewal of forces in me, and I am sure that is the case for alot of people out there. I hope that this boost will help everybody down the road for the rest of the semester, and let's not give up halfway through. Guess who is now back in the game? See you on the other side.

There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope for the hopeless
There's hope
There's hope
There's hope

There's hope...